Shawn O'Brien Town Tamer # 1

by W. , Johnstone, William

  The mists of sleep finally cleared, Shawn smiled. “Except I saw my brother Patrick, and he wasn’t there. I mean, he wasn’t on the moor when Judith . . . died.”

  “A man’s dreams mix up what’s real and what isn’t,” Sedley said. “For a spell there, you were in a bad place.”

  “Dartmoor. I was in Dartmoor in England.”

  “Yeah, like I said, a bad place.”

  Shawn swung his legs off the bed. “And now I’m in another bad place. What time is it?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Sedley said. “Early in the morning, I reckon. Two or three o’clock.”

  “I’m surprised I could sleep on this stinking cot.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t sleep on it again. You’ll get us shot.”

  “They’re going to kill us, Hamp,” Shawn said. “Kill us for nothing. Damn it all, that’s hard to take.”

  “Dying is never easy,” the gambler said. “Mind you, I came close one time. Got shot in the chest by Lucas Selfert. You ever hear of him?”

  “Can’t say as I have,” Shawn said. He didn’t want to listen to Sedley. He was again enduring the pain of Judith’s passing and he needed quiet. But he made the effort.

  “Lucas was a gambling man out of New Orleans. Nice enough feller when he was sober, but a sore loser when he was drinking, and mean with it. A pint of whiskey in him and ol’ Lucas would piss on a widow woman’s kindling. Anyhow, one night in the Crystal Palace sporting house in N’Orleans—I recollect it well because, aside from getting shot, I’d had me a crawfish boil earlier in the evening that was the best I ever ate. Well anyhoo, Lucas accuses me of stacking the cards and he says, ‘You’re a damned cheat, Sedley, and low down.’”

  The gambler passed his depleted whiskey flask to Shawn. “Now, you don’t call a professional gambler a cheat. It’s bad for business, you understand. So, says I, ‘Be damned to you for a sore loser, a rotten poker player and no kind of gentleman, Lucas.’”

  Sedley accepted the flask from Shawn and took a swig. He wiped his mustache with the back of his hand and said, “Next thing I know, Lucas draws down on me with a .32 sneaky gun and cuts loose. Now, as a general rule, on account of the card table, a gambler gets shot either in the balls or in the chest. Well, Lucas, doin’ me a favor, like, plugs me just under the diamond stickpin in my cravat. I was prospering in those days.”

  “Nice of him to do that,” Shawn said.

  “Yeah, that’s what them as saw the shooting scrape said.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, I skinned my own .32 and fired back. Shot a bunch of feathers off a sporting woman’s head and put another bullet into the chandelier. Some feller yelled, ‘Here, that won’t do!’ and took my gun.”

  Sedley shook his head, then said, “What happened next was they carried me out of the sporting house to a doctor. And the doc says, ‘Mr. Sedley, there’s nothing I can do for you. The bullet ranged downward and is too close to your heart to remove. All you can do now is to take your medicine and make your peace with God.’”

  “But you’re still here,” Shawn said.

  “Yup, I got better and surprised the hell out of everybody, especially Lucas Selfert. The law wrote the whole thing off as a misunderstanding and Lucas served five days in jail for the unlawful discharge of a firearm and then lit a shuck.”

  “You ever see him again?”

  “Sure I did, up Denver way a couple of years back. He was down on his luck, lying in the gutter, a pitiful sight.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Nothing. I just walked past him. Served him right for plugging me.”

  Shawn smiled. “You’re an unforgiving man, Hamp. I reckon the very least you—”

  The inner wooden door swung open and then a key clanked in an iron lock. . . .

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The cell’s iron gate clanged open and a figure out of a nightmare stood silhouetted in the doorway.

  Holding a massive wooden club in his right hand, the mole shuffled inside, dressed in a shabby shirt and pants, carpet slippers on his feet. The man’s face was splattered with blood and the club, a knotted limb cut from the white skeleton of a dead tree, dripped scarlet and gray gore. . . .

  “My God, man,” Hamp Sedley said, “what have you done?”

  “I set you free,” the mole said. There were specks of blood on his slicked-back black hair. “Come. No time to be lost.” He held up a key. “I take the shackles off.”

  Shawn, his chains clanking, crossed the floor. “Where is Jack Fendy?” he said.

  “Dead. He beat me many times.” The mole brandished the club. “I kill him real good. Scatter his brains all over the sheriff’s office.”

  A rat scuttled between the man’s feet, then scurried into a corner.

  Shawn shivered. “Get the chains off,” he said. “What’s your name, mister?”

  The mole shrugged his round shoulders, a strange lost look on his face. His eyes were the color of spilled molasses. “No name. I have no name.”

  A fat, soft man with no discernible human shape, he got down on one knee and unlocked the padlock that held the shackles binding Shawn’s feet and hands.

  “What name would you like to have?” Shawn said, as his chinking chains fell around him.

  “No name,” the mole said. He rose heavily and turned to Sedley.

  “What if I call you Sammy?” Shawn said. “I’ve always been partial to that name.”

  The mole said nothing. He worked the key into Sedley’s padlock.

  “Then Sammy it is,” Shawn said, rubbing his wrists. “It’s a crackerjack name for a man who doesn’t have one.”

  Sedley was free, and the man newly christened Sammy put a finger to his lips, then motioned for the gambler and Shawn to follow him.

  They walked behind Sammy into the next room, a typical lawman’s office with a desk, chairs, gun rack and yellowed wanted dodgers on the walls.

  Jack Fendy was propped up in a sitting position in the chair behind the desk, as dead as a man could ever be.

  A man hit fatally on the head with a heavy club will normally show only blood-matted hair, the lethal damage hidden. But very occasionally the skull will reveal a crack, the splintered edges of bone visible through the scalp. Brain matter oozes to the surface through this fracture, like oatmeal overflowing a pot.

  But Fendy’s head was smashed to a pulp, like the top of a soft-boiled egg after a hungry breakfaster has tapped it all over with a spoon. There was little left of his features and the shoulders of his shirt were glistening with blood and bone.

  “My God, Sammy,” Sedley said, “when you kill a man, you kill him all the way, don’t you?”

  “He beat me many, many times,” Sammy said. “I hated him.”

  “No surprise there,” Sedley said. “You got to hate a man real bad to do damage like that to him.”

  Shawn crossed the floor quickly. He’d spotted his carpetbag, which had been tossed carelessly into a corner. The buckles of the leather straps hadn’t been undone and it looked like the bag hadn’t been opened and searched.

  His heart thumping in his ears, Shawn fervently hoped that was the case.

  Yes! Everything was still intact, including a cartridge belt and holster and a short-barreled Colt revolver.

  He strapped on the Colt, then took a box of ammunition out of the bag. “Forty-five?” he said to Sedley as he watched the gambler remove Fendy’s revolver from the leather.

  The gambler examined the blue Colt, then smiled, “Yup, .45 is our daisy, O’Brien.”

  Shawn tossed the box back into the bag. “Grab a couple of rifles from the rack and see if there’s ammunition to go with them.”

  “I ain’t much of a hand with a long gun,” Sedley said.

  “I’ll teach you,” Shawn said.

  The gambler took down a couple of Winchesters, both in .44-40 caliber, and found a couple of boxes of shells to go with them.

  Sammy, Fendy’s blood crusted rust brown
on his face, said, “You go now.” He held up two fingers. “One, two horses outside.”

  “He’s right, O’Brien, we’d better light a shuck,” Sedley said.

  “Hamp, there are three of us,” Shawn said. “What about Sammy?”

  The gambler looked quickly at the man. “You got a horse?”

  Sammy shook his head. “I stay here.”

  “See, he wants to stay here, so let’s go,” Sedley said.

  “What about the girl?” Shawn said.

  “What about her?”

  “They’re going to burn her for a witch. I can’t let that happen. She goes with us, Hamp, or we don’t go at all.”

  Sedley looked stricken. “Are you out of your mind? She’s at the hotel under guard. Ain’t that right, Sammy?” Without waiting for an answer, he said, “There, Sammy says she’s under guard.”

  Once again Sammy, looking more molelike than ever, his swept back hair starting just above his eyebrows, held up two fingers. “One . . . two . . . guards,” he said. “Very bad men.”

  “You want to gunfight your way out of this burg, O’Brien?” Sedley said. “And with a woman in tow?”

  “If that’s what it takes,” Shawn said. “I’m in not much of a mind to see another woman murdered.” His eyes hardened. “I won’t step away from this, Hamp. But you can. I won’t hold it against you.”

  “Damn it all, O’Brien, and be double damned to ye for a crazy Irishman, but I won’t run out on you now. Time is ticking—let’s get it done.”

  Shawn smiled and put his hand on Sedley’s shoulder.

  “You’re true blue, Hamp,” he said.

  “No, I’m true yellow,” Sedley said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The moon was up and its light lay on the dusty street like winter frost.

  Holy Rood was so quiet the only sounds to be heard were the restless rush of the wind and distant yip of coyotes. But now and then the bell in the church tower dinged softly when the wind gusted, adding a small noise to the night.

  “This way,” Sammy whispered. He shuffled in his carpet slippers and still held the bloodstained club.

  Shawn and Sedley followed, leading the two saddled horses. Who they belonged to and where they had come from, Shawn had no idea. But he was willing to bet the mounts were owned by a couple of Hank Cobb’s boys.

  He and Sedley slid their rifles into the empty scabbards attached to the saddles as they drew closer to the hotel.

  Walking clear of the boardwalks where a man’s boots would sound like bass drums in the quiet, Sammy led the way toward the edge of town.

  They passed a store with a disfigured hanging sign that creaked in the wind.

  The sign had once read:

  PETE WRIGHT & SON

  GUNS, AMMUNITION

  & FISHING SUPPLIES

  The words GUNS and AMMUNITION had been whitewashed over, but were still fairly visible, the letters showing through like pale ghosts.

  It seemed that Cobb didn’t want the people of Holy Rood to have access to guns.

  An alley opened up to Shawn’s left and a bottle clinked somewhere in its rectangle of darkness. His Colt suddenly in his hand, Shawn stopped and so did the others.

  Long, tense moments passed, and then a small calico cat stepped out of the gloom on silent feet. Startled by the appearance of the men, she turned tail and dashed back into the alley. Bottles chinked again.

  Shawn realized that he’d been holding his breath and let it out in a relieved sigh.

  “No need to panic, O’Brien,” Sedley said. “It was only a cat.”

  Shawn glared at him. “Worked that out for yourself, huh?”

  Sammy put a finger to his lips and said, “Hush.”

  “See, you talk too much, O’Brien,” Sedley said.

  “Hotel,” Sammy said, pointing to a false-fronted building that marked the end of the street. “You go quiet now.”

  Shawn was not a whispering man, but he made the effort as he said to Sammy, “Where is the girl? I mean what room?”

  The question stumped the man and Shawn could’ve sworn Sammy’s nose twitched as he turned it over in his mind. Then his face lit up and he held up two fingers and said, “One . . . two . . . Miss Sally there. She a nice lady.”

  “Room 2, Sammy?” Sedley said, making sure.

  The man nodded. “Uh-huh. One . . . two.”

  “He could mean twelve,” Shawn said to the gambler. “Maybe she’s in Room 12.”

  “Then let’s go ask the night clerk,” Sedley said. He took time to check the loads in his Colt, then punched a cartridge into the empty chamber that had been under the hammer. “If they got a night clerk, that is.”

  Sammy nodded vehemently. “Got night clerk,” he said.

  “Understands more than he lets on,” Sedley said.

  The Rest and Be Thankful hotel was a whitewashed building, like all the other structures in town. A lamp burned in the office on the ground floor and spilled light onto the boardwalk that looked like pale orange paint.

  Beyond the hotel, the wagon road was a ribbon of gray that abruptly disappeared into sooty blackness.

  Shawn made a mental note of that. Once they had the girl, it was the route they’d take. They could lose themselves in the gloom—at least until the sun came up. He smelled sage in the wind and unsettled dust, but not a trace of the saloon odors of stale whiskey and beer, cheap perfume and crowded, unwashed bodies that were such staples of Western cow towns.

  Holy Rood was a sterile, viciously cruel place, and it seemed the citizens preferred it that way.

  But no matter. Shawn vowed that one day he’d come back and tear the town apart.

  Tame it!

  Wasn’t that the expression the newspapers used?

  But Shawn’s growing hatred for Holy Rood was not in retaliation for all the humiliations he himself had suffered.

  No, it was because of a cowboy Shawn didn’t know, a freckle-faced youngster named Sandy Worth, whose decapitated head had rolled in front of him . . . and the boy’s dying eyes that had begged for help that he could not give . . .

  “Hell, O’Brien, let’s get it done,” Sedley said. “You look like you’re standing there half asleep.”

  “Sorry,” Shawn said. He pulled his Colt from the holster and took the stairs that led to the surrounding porch with its extensive gingerbread trim, and stepped to the hotel’s frosted glass door.

  At that moment Shawn O’Brien was prepared to be a ruthless killer, no talk, no excuses, no mercy. . . just bang-bang.

  He reckoned his brother Jacob would be proud of him.

  The sleepy clerk at the front desk woke up in a hurry when Shawn stuck the muzzle of his revolver between the man’s eyes.

  “Where is the girl? And how many with her?” he said.

  The clerk, a neat little man with his thin hair parted in the middle and pomaded shiny and flat, recovered enough to paste a now-see-here look on his face.

  But it vanished quickly when Shawn thumbed back the hammer of the Colt, and said, “Mister, I swear, give me any sass and I’ll blow your damned head off.”

  The clerk saw the writing, or his brains, on the wall, because he said quickly, “Twenty-one.”

  “How many?” Shawn said.

  “Two. Maybe three. I don’t rightly know.” He attempted a smile. “You know how men are with a pretty girl.”

  Shawn was a man made strong by years of hard work on the Dromore range and anger made him stronger.

  He reached out, grabbed the clerk by his shirtfront and dragged him effortlessly across the desk and onto the floor.

  Then, his eyes ablaze with blue fire, he said, “Get up there and show me how men are with a pretty girl.”

  Suddenly, the little man was afraid. “If I interrupt the reverend brothers at their pleasure, they’ll shoot me.”

  “And I’ll shoot you if you don’t,” Shawn said. “Choose a trail.”

  Hamp Sedley, uneasy at the delay, grabbed the clerk by the scruff of hi
s neck and frog-marched him to the stairs.

  “All right, my buck, let’s get going,” he said.

  “The key,” the little man wailed, balling and un-balling his hands.

  “We won’t need a key,” Shawn said. “We’ll knock, polite like.”

  The door of Room 21 was at the end of a wallpapered hallway, lit by a couple of oil lamps. There was no sound but the rush of the wind outside and far in the distance the clacking rattle of a southbound freight.

  The clerk’s Adam’s apple bobbed as Sedley forced him relentlessly along the shadowed hall toward the door.

  Thick carpet covered the floor and absorbed the sound of booted men and no one stirred behind the numbered doors that lined the corridor.

  Then two things happened very quickly . . .

  Suddenly the clerk wrenched himself free of Sedley, ran to the door and pounded his fists on the varnished pine.

  “Help!” he yelled. “Help me.”

  Shawn taken by surprise, recovered, pushed the wailing clerk aside and kicked the door in.

  In a shower of splintering timber, the door violently slammed inside and crashed against the wall.

  Shawn stepped inside, his gun up and ready.

  A bearded man had the tearstained, naked girl on his knee and she fell heavily to the floor as he jumped to his feet. He grabbed a Colt from the table beside him, swung on Shawn—and took a bullet between the eyes.

  The big .45 shattered through the bearded man’s skull and blew out the back of his head. A sudden fan of blood and brain splattered the wall behind him.

  Beside Shawn, Hamp Sedley triggered a shot, then a second at a tall man, still wearing his monk’s robes, who stood close to the fireplace.

  Both missed.

  Cursing Sedley, Shawn turned, his eyes targeting the surviving gunman who’d already skinned a gun from the holster at his side.

  But at that instant Shawn was roughly pushed aside and Sammy charged at the tall man, his bloody, knotted club raised for the kill.

  For the space of a heartbeat the tall man’s face was stricken, but he steadied himself and got his work in. Two bullets crashed into Sammy’s chest, but the great, sleek mole absorbed the hits and kept coming.